Yet another blow to Tesla? BYD reveals autopilot-style active safety upgrade for all vehicles including the BYD Atto 3, Seal and Shark 6 as Tesla admits some of its cars won't be able to support full self-driving after all

As Elon Musk has admitted to Tesla investors on an earning call that cars sold between 2019 and 2023 won’t be able to support full self-driving without some kind of major upgrade, BYD has revealed its competitor technology it dubs the ‘God’s Eye’ system.

BYD’s founder and chairman, Wang Chuanfu, announced the new God’s Eye system will be rolled out over the next two to three years.

The company said it has the largest vehicle cloud database in China alongside 5000 active driving system engineers as part of the largest amount of research and development staff in the automotive world.

God's Eye will be available in three different variants depending on the vehicle and the hardware available ranging from “C” that us available on more basic vehicles like the Seagull city car, to “A” that is available on only BYD’s most expensive vehicles sold under its ultra luxury YangWang sub-brand.

The most basic C-level suite will consist of 12 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and five milliwave radars, and will use both the car’s onboard computer hardware and cloud computing using the car’s connectivity suite to enable at least freeway self-driving.

Meanwhile the B-level suite, available on more expensive BYDs and vehicles sold under the Denza and FangChengBao brands will include a LiDAR array alongside a more powerful internal computer.

The A-level suite, reserved for only the most expensive BYDs will upgrade the hardware to include three LiDARs and an internal processor twice as powerful as the one in the level B suite.

B-suite cars are said to be able to drive purely on navigational inputs alone, while A level cars can even engage in driverless track driving, which the brand demonstrated with a video.

The BYD news comes at a bad time for Tesla. The brand’s controversial leader, Elon Musk, said in an earnings call the “Hardware 3” computer, which exists in cars sold from 2019 to 2023, cannot actually handle the “full self driving” suite that buyers were sold as a $10,100 option (and continues to be offered as an option on the current Model 3 and incoming Model Y). 

"The honest answer is that we're going to have to upgrade people's Hardware 3 computer for those that have bought full self-driving [...] that is the honest answer, and that's going to be painful and difficult, but we'll get it done. Now I'm kind of glad that not that many people bought the FSD package.” Musk said.

Musk’s comments are a notable about-face for a company which has espoused the self-driving capabilities of its cars for over a decade, and whose new-model future depends on its allegedly self-driving robotaxi and robovan it revealed in late 2024.

BYD’s new system will be rolled out over the next few years, but it is as-yet unclear when we’ll see the first vehicles equipped with the technology land in Australia.

BYD won’t just be rivalling Tesla on the advanced driver assistance tech front. Zeekr offers point-to-point self-driving tech on some of its range, which is currently geofenced to several major Chinese cities. General Motor’s SuperCruise and Ford’s BlueCruise are currently marketed as ‘hands-free highway driving’ products.

Currently “hands-free” systems are not legal to use in Australia, and would need to overcome significant legal hurdles in order to be used locally.